Privacy and Boundaries: What's left?

As our culture becomes interconnected with more and more adults utilizing social media and other online features, what does privacy and boundaries mean to us anymore? From users posting every aspect of their lives to behind the scenes tracking and data mining, do online users have any privacy left and do they even think about their own privacy? This article will look at the relationship between online users and their privacy. How far is too far when it comes to advertisers monitoring our every move on social media and when do the all of the details of a person’s life become too much? Social media is evolving and with that evolution society is faced with new social situations it may have never thought of before; who would have ever thought our every move can be tracked every time a user gets on social media.

So what is meant by data mining? Data mining is “the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information – information that can be used to increase revenue, cut costs or both” (Palace, What is Data Mining). One problem that can come out of data mining is individual privacy; discovering information about their buying habits and preferences (Palace, Data Mining: Issue).

By the very nature of social media, it is meant to be a social situation where people connect to each other; generally this includes products and companies. In 2009, there was much discussion that Google was going to purchase Twitter due to the addition it would give them in data and information about users, to then sell to advertisers. Deep information about consumers has always been valuable to marketers and social media, email and other online activities can be tracked and that information can be accessed (Dvorak). In the case of social media, many users update what they are doing/eating, where they are or what they’ve recently purchased and sometimes connect this to the specific company/product/restaurant etc. In addition to social media, data is being collected when Internet users perform other tasks online, including online purchases, scheduling classes, and interacting with the government (taxes, census, and car and voter registration) just to name a few (Edelstein & Millenson).Purchasing sites like Amazon have a button that can be clicked after a customer has made a purchase to post the information about what was bought to social media like Facebook and Twitter. Amazon also has similar features when a Kindle user has finished reading a book, this information can be shared to social media. This information can all be used, stored, and collected by data-miners. It seems as though many users use these features without thinking about what is actually happening when they post these things on social media.

Pinterest is a data-mining gold rush with users pinning their favorite things all in one place. Pinterest is considered a bookmarking site and these “interest-based social networks allows for better models of user interest in context of established and new tasks, connecting interest with demographic characteristics, studying changes in user interest with respect to time and location…” (Popescu, 11). Because of websites like Pinterest, data miners are able to track trends easier than ever before because Pinterest is a curation tool that assembles updates and shares users’ interests, using boards (collections) of images (Popescu, 11).

With social media being a public space where individuals share ideas, where does the line of privacy start? Legally, that is a discussion for another day or another researcher. Culturally, in my view, it seems as though privacy isn’t something the majority of social media users are worrying themselves about. On December 12, 2012, Facebook changed their privacy settings. Facebook had a privacy policy voting poll that users could vote in to keep current privacy settings. However, only .07 percent of Facebook users participated; needing 300 million votes for their voices to be heard, only 600,000 users participated (Harris). Although privacy seems like an important issue, online users’ relationship with their own privacy would appear as though it’s lacking. Social media users to have the options of changing their privacy settings; allowing only users they consider friends to see their content. This is one step users to utilize to keep their user profiles less public than others. As more and more people use social media privacy will remain an issue as data mining becomes easier with new methods and website structures. This is a continuing issue that will have to kept top of mind.

UPDATE Dec 18, 2012:
A new privacy policy has been released for Instagram, giving themselves the right to sell users' images to advertisers without notifying the user. The policy also states that Instagram can share information about its users with its parent company, Facebook, as well as other affiliates and advertisers (BBC). The social media world is aflutter with discussion.

Sources

• BBC. "Instagram Seeks Rights to Sell Access to Photos to Advertisers". BBC, 2012. 18 Dec 2012. Web. 18 Dec 2012. 
• Dvorak, John. “Data Mining and the Death of Privacy”. PC Magazine. 25.8 (2009): 38. Web. 12 Dec 2012.
• Edelstein, Herb & Janet Millenson. “Data Mining and Privacy”. DM Review 13.12 (2003): 65. Web. 12 Dec 2012.
• Harris, Alistair. “Facebook Privacy Controls Updated After Users Ignore Policy Vote”. Click- Through Marketing. n.p. 12 Dec. 2012. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
• Palace, Bill. “Data Mining: Issues”. Anderson Graduate School of management of UCLA. (1996). Web. 13 Dec 2012.
• ---. “What is Data Mining”. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. (1996). Web. 13 Dec 2012.
• Popescu, Ana-Maria. “Pinterest: Towards a Better Understanding of User Interest”. The Conference of Information and Knowledge Management, October 29 – November 2: Maui, HI. 11-12. New York, 2012. Web. 12 Dec 2012.